On a hot and sticky summer night, when the cicada chorus has died and the lights from a passing electrical storm no longer dance on my bedroom walls, Africa comes calling. It is not the first time she has visited, and likely not the last.

Africa is a barefoot child, standing in the doorway of a cinderblock house, eating a red banana. She is a baby elephant following her hulking mother through the bush, flapping her ears and raising her trunk to trumpet in playful imitation. She is the whirl of color and motion at the bazaar, the pure-white crown of Kilimanjaro, the purple shuka (robe) of the Maasai.

In my mind her colors fade with time, but still they are more vivid than the rest.

My family’s first safari was in Tanzania, in East Africa, during the Great Migration. Like all good vacations, it was the kind of trip that changes how you look at the world and leaves you wanting more.

We returned to Africa the following year, this time to Johannesburg in South Africa, the jumping-off point for our safari in Botswana and Zambia. In a few months we leave again, for Rwanda and Uganda.

You can read my personal accounts of these trips--including "live" reports from the bush--by clicking any link under "The Safari Experience" above. But I should warn you in advance, no written report can do justice to these places.

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